April 13, 2012

Earth Day Inspired Tree Craft

After reading books about Earth Day this week we decided to make a piece of art using recyclable materials. (ok, really I decided, but the kids went along with it) Since trees are so good for our Earth, it became our inspiration.

These are the books we read this week about Earth Day.

Love Your World by Dawn Sirett (found in the non-fiction section)

Fun non-fiction book about different ways we can all take care of the plants, the animals and the planet. I really liked the pictures and illustrations in this book and it gave some really good inspiration for some activities and crafts you can do for Earth Day.

Dora Celebrates Earth Day! by Emily Sollinger

If you have a Dora fan, this is a great Earth Day read. It's Earth Day, and Dora is making a scrapbook filled with tips about what we can all do to help save our planet.

I Can Save the Earth by Alison Inches

Cute, cute story! Max is a cute, furry green monster who is an environmental nightmare. Among other
things, he leaves on all the lights, keeps his computer plugged in, blasts the
TV, hoards his old toys and uses so much toilet paper it clogs the toilet until
finally, his excessive ways cause a power outage. With no TV to watch, computer
to play on, video games to play with, Max finds there is a whole big world
outside that he can make a difference in the environment.

Earth Mother by Ellen Jackson

Earth Mother awakes with the dawn. As she walks the land, swims the seas, and climbs the mountains, she nurtures all of creation. She tends to the plants and animals in turn, and puts to right the world as she passes. She meets Man, Frog, and Mosquito along her way and each thank her but also give her advice about making their lives better. Earth Mother is amused when it becomes clear that the circle of life is not without a healthy dose of cosmic humor.

I loved this story because it showed that even though there are things here on the Earth that we don't enjoy, like mosquito's, there is a use for them, and every creation here brings balance to the Earth.

It's Earth Day by Mercer Mayer

After watching a film about climate changes at school, Little Critter decides to do his part to slow down global warming to help save the Polar Bears. With the help of his family and friends, Little Critter begins to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

To make our tree craft, I started by cutting up an old cardboard box to look like a science project board. I wanted it to be able to stand freely on it's own, that's why I cut it this way. My boys painted it a good coat of blue paint. (It was one of those "doing your hair is optional" days and Andy choose not to do his. haha!)

Once the paint was completely dry, we cut an empty paper towel roll in half to make our tree trunk. You will have to use a lot of school glue to secure it in place. You can see in the picture below how the toilet paper roll makes the tree pop out of the cardboard.

For our tree branches we used a brown lunch sack. We cut it into strips and then crinkled and twisted the strips to make them into branches. Then glued them onto the cardboard to make the tree. At this point we let the project dry over night.

For the life of me, I could not figure out why this picture below keeps uploading rotated the wrong direction. (Grrrrr!) The next morning, we went through some old magazines I had around the house and ripped out pages that had lots of green on them. Then I got out a black marker and drew leafs over the green areas. I did try to use ares with different colors mixed in the greens to make the tree more colorful.

Luke helped me cut them all out which was quite the tedious process.

Then we glued the leaves all over our tree. It looks so pretty with all the different greens and colors from the magazine pages.

We also found a page that had a picture of soil on it, so we ripped it into strips and glued it along the bottom of the tree to make the ground.

We are really excited about how turned out. It was a great way to finish up our Earth Day week.

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Feel free to use these ideas at your home, school or anywhere else you teach and play. After all, that's what my whole website is about, to inspire you to get crafty with your kids!

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